Tag: Car rental with baby seats

Can your rental car price really be true?

Well its time to have a look at what seems to be great prices online, but really masked over with the Terms and Conditions when you arrive. Who honestly is looking into there car rental company contract before they travel and who is going to be another victim when they arrive on holiday? This question could be the answer to a successful start to your holiday or the main conversation for your vacation period!

Fuel Charges: This is a good place to start with an increment to your cost to add a fueling charge from 30€ plus the cost of the fuel, normally at around 1.60€ per litre for a full tank of fuel at 50 litres (this is a 3rd more expensive than the normal cost per litre). This would be a grand total of 110.00€ to add to your rental price, if you refuel the car before returning it they will refund the difference of what you spend. You will probably only get about 50€ maximum of fuel back in the tank, which means you have given them 60€ for WHAT! The crazy part is that 85% of clients do not see this in time and once you have arrived, it’s to late to cancel! See image below to show a screen shot of fuel policy conditions.

Insurance: Most car rental companies have the basic insurance policy which only covers the third party full and the main driver will be required to leave substantial deposit, normally around 1,100€. In any case of damage to the vehicle this deposit is at their disposal to use for the repairs. Most car rental companies will use top end dealerships for the repairs under contract, this way they can charge the highest rate from the deposit and they are not at liberty to supply you with a receipt. Along with administration fees you can nearly lose 50% of your deposit for a scratch to a door panel.

Taking out any of the other insurances covering a medium to full policy can cost you and extra 8/ 12€ per day, with additional 56€ plus to your car rental total (this is based on a 7 day rental).

Child Car Seats: For families this has to be the worst business behavior for me, that your child is not as important as the car. What do I mean by this? When you book a car with most online car rental companies, you choose the car and then you add the extras i.e. Sat Nat, Child Car Seats, etc. these items are tagged on to the booking as a separate item (insignificant to the car rental company) you then normally pay part or all of the booking. These items are only quoted for at this point. Once you arrive for your car rental, because these are not items under contract with the car they may not be available, this leaves you with a car and no child car seat. If they are available then the prices can be extortionate! If you take the prices from the image below for a 1 week rental, this will total from 50.82€ to 86.03€ per seat.

Extra Driver: Another way for you to spend another 8/12€ per day for the safety of having the optional driver, when if you have one of the optional insurance policies this is included. Check the terms with the policy for the full insurance option before committing to pay for this. Tots Store car rental include the the second driver with the Full insurance policy (see our Terms and Conditions).

Queuing: This could be the worst start to your holiday having to start by linking on to a 3 to 4 hour queues to wait to collect your rental car. With very insufficient information of where to collect your car once you arrive, especially with the comparison car rental websites, they have created another way for you to pay between 50 / 70€ for express process. Waiting in an airport with a child or children for another 2 hours plus after a flight and early start can not be a fun start to your holiday! We have heard of customers waiting in the wrong queue for over an hour and then upon reaching the desk, told that in order to process the order it would cost the client 55€ extra for standing in the shorter queue for Speedy Process! Or the client would need to rejoin the longer queue, which was now at approximately 4 hours.

Tots Store Car rental service has put a stop to all this nonsense providing you with a complete vehicle and children equipment rental service. The price is what it says, this does not increase once you have agreed. These are some of the benefits you will receive with this service:

Advice on vehicle size for rental.

Personally met on arrival at the airport.

Escorted to your vehicle parked outside the Terminal doors.

NO long queues, no shuttle bus service or waiting in office for your vehicle.

Tots Store products will be in the vehicle.

On return, bring the vehicle to the same place outside the departures.

Great service and clear instructions on where to meet them at the airport. We ran a little late dropping the travel cots off which they were very good about. I would definitely use them again.read more

Latest reviews by Google

Excellent service from Tots Store. We have used the car rental and child seat hire a number of times now. It is always first rate, so straightforward and ideal when travelling with children. Thank you!

Horrendous. The experience completely ruined my first holiday with my son. We rented a car seat via this company but not a car as we have preferential rates with another car hire company. Order and pick up of the seat was all relatively straightforward and pleasant but when we returned the seat Richard accused us of having lost a strap from the seat. We hadn’t been using the harness of the seat as my son uses stage 3 configuration so hadn’t checked harness straps. Richard kept insisting we had lost the strap so we called the car rental company to check the car we’d just dropped off as the seat had gone straight in the car and hadn’t been taken back out until we returned to the airport. The car rental company confirmed there was nothing left in the car and checked the courtesy shuttle we had taken to meet Richard from the car rental drop off. Richard then lied and said the seat was a €200 seat which was now unusable. I’ve found the seat brand new for £69.99 in the Uk and €99 euros in Spain. I have also checked with BabyAuto the manufacturers of the seat in question and it is possible to buy a replacement strap rather than a whole new seat. He accused me of not caring about the welfare of my child for using the seat without the strap despite the fact stage 3 doesn’t require it and was generally quite aggressive. He then took a further £91.40 from my bank account despite there being nothing in any communication I’ve had from them about this which is in fact more than the seat in brand new condition is worth let alone a new strap which I still maintain we never had. I feel completely conned and spent the last of my holiday in tears in the airport.

We rented two cars and a car seat for our three year old. Excellent service, all went smoothly. We got a free upgrade. The car seat was rear facing and very clean. Richard helped us pack the car. Highly recommended!

Excellent friendly, meet and greet service, even when our plane to Spain was delayed by an hour.
We ordered a hire car, Maxi Cosi car seat, travel cot and mattress. Hire car was brand new (even got a free upgrade) and the baby equipment was in excellent clean condition.
We went for this service as we didn't want our own baby equipment to be damaged in cargo, wanted to avoid long queues for hire cars (especially with a baby in hot weather) and didn't like the idea of unfair fuel policies.
With totstore the baby equipment was in excellent condition. Maxi Cosi products are high quality and light weight so we knew we weren't getting 'any old car seat' that may have inadequate safety credentials.
We were met at the airport arrivals with our names on a card. Paperwork was handled quickly, and the hire car was brought to the front of the airport. They even loaded our luggage for us and fitted the car seat.
We will definitely recommend to any friends or family travelling to Malaga and will use again if required next time.

We hired a 9 seater vehicle for our weeks holiday in Malaga. My experience was soured by the fact that we expected to get a meet and greet service at the airport -- we followed all the instructions that they sent us to do. However, when we went to the arrivals hall, the person who would have met and greeted us was nowhere to be seen. To make things worse, nobody picked up on the other side of the telephone number for Tots. This was incredibly frustrating when you are with very young kids who are crying and tired and you have paid a premium for this service. The person did eventually turn up 30 minutes late and shrugged his shoulders and said he was tending to another person. This was completely unacceptable. When I told the company about this, I was never given an apology, just excuse that our flight might have been experiencing problems in getting to the airport on time -- the whole point of giving them the flight number was that they can adjust to this! Atleast tell me in some way via email, text etc. Nothing. I will not be using Tots service again. Better to use a reputable company like Helle Holis or the traditional companies. Please also be aware that Tots do not run the car hire themselves -- they outsource it to a third-party (Tony's cars or something); another reason to go with a dedicated company for car hire. Too may points of failure here.

Fantastic service from Malaga airport we received a discount on a cash payment which was a great saving on the rental products we hired. They do except credit cards but we had no problem paying cash. We will definitely use them again.

The images on this website are for reference only and are not necessarily the actual product provided. Tots Store do all we can to provide the correct image, but in some cases it is for the branding purpose only. We thank you for your co-operation.